So I have a friend who I really love. We've known each other for over 10 years. But she doesn't text me, I always text first, always invite her. She hasn't made any effort to see me since November. She has turned down my invites. I asked if I did something wrong and she said no, she's just busy. I'm not sure she cares about me anymore. I don't want to give up on our friendship but I also don't want her to feel trapped if she is no longer interested. Anyone have any thoughts?

@LiveYourValues I actually had a very similar situation with a friend of me and my partner. We made a decision to step back for a few months and were really hurt when we realized that xe (pronouns xe, xem, xyr) was not making any effort to invest in our relationship.

@LiveYourValues We finally gave in and messaged xem about our feelings of abandonment and made it quite clear that we would respect a decision of stepping back from our friendship. Our age difference had always caused us to have a bit of an older sibling relationship. So, moving on to focus on xyr own friends was completely ok.

@LiveYourValues Xyr response was completely different than what we expected. Xe had shame/indebtedness from financial help we had provided in the past and had kind of been too embarrassed to reach out.